It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

When Senator Max Baucus stood up to speak this week, he painted a bleak picture of the suffering and economic losses taking place in agricultural America.

“As last year came and went, a drought stretched across the United States. Wheat and corn fields dried up. Without enough forage, ranchers faced the decision to either to sell their herds or purchase extra feed, cutting into their thin margins.

As of this week, over 2,000 counties have been designated as drought disaster areas by the USDA. In my state of Montana, 36 counties, or well over half of our State, are in disaster. Compound that with one of the worst droughts in recent history and our cattle and sheep producers are hanging on by a thread.

Where our corn, wheat, and soybean farmers have crop insurance as a backstop, we have left our ranchers without any assistance. Pastureland last year was scarce and the cost of feed, when it was even available, was often unaffordable. Many ranchers are responding by culling their herds.”

Baucus and two other senators, Roy Blunt and Debbie Stabenow, proposed a legislative response: S. 141 would extend an agricultural disaster relief bill, providing money to farmers who suffered economic hardship because of the extreme weather of last year.

S. 141 is like first aid treatment, however. It addresses one instance of harm without even trying to deal with the cause of that harm. Years of economically-devastating extreme weather are becoming more common, at an increasing pace, because climate changed caused by human industrial activity, including the burning of oil, coal and natural gas.

Max Baucus, Roy Blunt and Debbie Stabenow don’t dare to introduce legislation to address the problem of climate change. They prefer to simply throw government money at the disasters that climate change has unleashed.

Yep. That’s what we can expect from disfunctional, delusional government whose only play is the status quo (which isn’t working any longer). Failure to react properly to changing conditions makes one quickly obsolete in nature.

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